The Countdown: A Four-Week Scriptwriting Boot Camp for High School Students

Greetings writers!

In the next four weeks, our Countdown Boot Camp will take you through everything you need to know to tackle the great Script Frenzy adventure this April. Over the next month, we'll invent heroes and villains, hatch plots, create settings, practice writing amazing dialogue, and even learn a thing or two about the mysterious art of script formatting.

Let's get started!

Week One: Choosing the Right Script for You and Developing Characters

In this week's Countdown, we will help you decide what kind of script to write this April, and see if we can't find a script-worthy character or two running around in your imagination.

The first decision you'll need to make is which type of script you want to write this April. There are many different kinds of scripts, more than you might think. There are scripts written for movies (screenplays), scripts written for the theater (stage plays), scripts written for television (teleplays), and there are even scripts written for comic books. You may know of even more types of scripts—like radio scripts—but these are the four we will be focusing on in this Boot Camp. Since you'll be spending a whole month with your script, you should take the time to read a little bit about each type to make sure you’re choosing the script that'll be most interesting for you to write.

Screenplays

The screenplay is wonderful because you can do all kinds of fantastic things in movies that are very hard to do on the stage. You can cover great distances in a second. You can jump through time and space. You can create a scene that takes place at a football game with 10,000 roaring fans in the background, or in a cave filled with 1,000 live cobras. The sky's the limit. You can even write an animated film (Pixar, watch out!).

However, there are some unique challenges to the screenplay. In a screenplay, because you have so many options, things can get overwhelming. You'll likely have a ton of scenes, which can mean a lot of settings and characters to keep track of.

Plus, like stage plays and most comic books, you'll have to develop a plot that involves your protagonist going up against various challenges in order reach his or her goals. By the end of the journey, your character has to change, whether or not he or she gets exactly what he or she wanted. This change that almost every main character goes through over the course of a movie is called a "character arc." Coming up with a good one is usually necessary if you want the audience to walk away feeling satisfied.

The biggest challenge for screenplays, though, has nothing to do with the actual writing. The challenge comes later, when you start thinking about bringing your script to life. Producing a screenplay requires you or someone you know to track down a camera and computer editing software, and it means you'll have to start thinking about things like lighting and sound as well.

If you love movies, don't let this scare you off! Writing a movie, even if it never gets made, is still a great creative adventure. Besides, as you've no doubt seen on recent visits to YouTube, anyone with a video camera can make a movie and put it out there for the world to see (and post sarcastic comments about).

To read more about writing a screenplay check out Intro to Screenwriting in our Writer’s Resources section.

Stage plays

This brings us to the stage play. The stage play is wonderful because you can write it, grab a few friends, and perform it. You can even get in touch with the drama department at your school to see if they might want to stage part or all of your newly written play. It doesn't take too much work to share your story with an audience, and it can easily be performed over and over by different groups of actors, and given a whole new life each time.

Though you need to have a well-developed picture of your scenes in mind when writing a stage play, you don't need to give us as much background description of the sets and scenery as you do in screenplays. Playwrights typically leave it up to the director and set designers to imagine what the stage should look like, which means less work for you as a writer.

The stage play, though, comes with some limits that most screenplays and some teleplays don't have. Because a stage play unfolds in front of an audience, it occurs in what's called real time. If a scene takes ten minutes to perform, then just ten minutes will have passed in the lives of the characters. In a movie, ten minutes on screen could last anywhere from a few minutes to several decades in the lives of the characters.

When writing a play, you're also limited by the number of people who can fit on a stage. Getting that football game we mentioned earlier into a stage play would be tough to pull off. Plus, with every new scene, you have to give your characters time for a costume change and the stagehands time for a set change before the next scene starts. Because it can get expensive to build complicated sets, many stage plays take place with very little background decoration and very few scene changes. Sometimes an entire play is set in a couple rooms, much like a television sitcom. As with television, when there are very few visuals and only a handful of characters, the dialogue really has to be strong to carry the story.

To read more about writing a stage play check out Intro to Playwriting in our Writer’s Resources section.

Teleplays

If you put a stage play and a screenplay in a blender with a little bit of old-time radio, and you put it on high speed, you’ll get a teleplay. Some television shows are very similar to movies (these are also called one-camera TV shows), in that they jump through space and time, through multiple scene locations, and have special effects. Others are more like stage plays (these are called three-camera TV shows), in that they are filmed in very few locations, usually in front of a studio audience.

The great thing about writing for television is that there are so many choices. You can write an hour-long drama, sci-fi, or mystery show. You can write a 30-minute sit-com or cartoon. You can write a movie made for TV (also known as a Movie of the Week or MOW). You can even write a script for a new episode of your favorite existing TV show. And television plots are usually a lot less involved than those of most movies, plays, and comic books. Though your characters are usually going after something that they want in each episode—whether it is solving a crime, or getting a date—it is usually not life-changing! As a matter a fact, you don’t want your characters to change very much at all. The reason people keep watching a certain show is because they love the characters just the way they are. You might want your protagonist's ultimate goal to be more life-changing than getting a date—like saving the world from evil vampires—but if he or she does this in the first episode then you’ll have nothing to write about in the next.

Writing for the small screen does have its challenges. Here is where the dash of old-time radio comes in. Television shows have a lot of dialogue, and this is especially true for three-camera shows that are shot in very few locations without a lot of props or special effects. Without suspense, action, and fancy effects, you’ll have to move the story forward and keep your audience's attention using dialogue. That means that not only will you have to write a lot of dialogue, you’ll have to write a lot of really witty and quick dialogue to keep people watching.

This leads us to the final and biggest challenge of television writing: keeping your audience from changing the channel. When you are watching a play or a movie in a theater and you’re bored or unimpressed, leaving is your only option, and chances are you’re not going to do that. When you're watching television, on the other hand, you have tons of options, especially if you have cable! If a show is even a tiny bit of a snore, all you have to do is push a button, and you’re on to the next show. This means that a TV script has to grab your viewers' attention right off the bat and keep them watching throughout the whole show, including all the commercial breaks.

But don’t be discouraged. If you're like a lot of people, you already know a lot about television from watching it. And if you choose to write a teleplay, you’ll have the perfect excuse to watch even more television. It's for research purposes!

To read more about writing a teleplay check out Intro to Writing for Television in our Writer’s Resources section.

Scripts for Comic Books and Graphic Novels

You may or may not know this, but you don’t have to be a talented artist to write comic books. Many comic books begin with a script that looks similar to those written for movies, plays, and TV shows; many of these scripts are not written by the artist who ends up drawing them. Even if you are an artist, the first step in creating a comic book is writing out the script.

The cool thing about writing a comic book, compared to other types of scripts, is that you have a lot control over the final product. Usually, you will either be drawing the comic yourself or working with one other person (the artist) to create the final look and feel of it. Not only do you get to decide on the characters, settings, story, and dialogue, you get to decide what goes in each and every panel. That’s like a screenwriter getting to decide what goes in each and every shot of a movie, which is hardly ever the case. Another great thing about comic books is that they’re pretty easy to produce. If you or someone you know is a good artist, you can draw the comic book after April and make copies for all your friends and family, or have it printed through a print-on-demand publisher. If you're feeling brave, you can take your new comic to your local independent book store to see if they will carry it. Many independent bookstores carry self-published comics and “zines” by local writers and authors!

But writing comic books isn’t as easy as it may seem. Many people are under the impression that comics are silly books written just for kids, but that is not true at all. Especially when it comes to graphic novels. Graphic novels are similar to comic books in that they tell a story through illustrated panels, but they tend to be lengthier and contain more complex story lines similar to those of novels. Like all writers, comic-book and graphic-novel writers have to think about character, plot, setting, and dialogue. With comic-book writing, though, you also have to think about all the elements of a story visually, frame-by-frame. You have to be the writer and the director, and you have to know both the story you want to tell and how it is going to look on the page. You have to think about things like the “flow” of the panels, the style of your art, which moments of the story you want to show, and which ones you want to leave out. That means that you have to write a pretty descriptive scene for each panel in the book, which takes a lot of time and patience.

Making Your Decision

You'll be good at writing any of these types of scripts, so don't stress out too much over the decision. The real point here is to have a creative adventure, and you'll do that no matter what kind of script you write. If you're doing this project as part of a group, your teacher may have some thoughts on which script makes the most sense for you to tackle. If you're making that decision yourself, just ask yourself what form resonates with you the most? Are you a movie person? A play person? If you’re still having trouble deciding, make sure you read more about each type of script in our Writer’s Resources section. When you've made your decision, read on!

Creating Great Characters

Now that you know what kind of script you want to write, it's time to give some thought to the most important element of your script: the characters! The characters are the beings that perform the action of your script. They can be people, aliens, talking animals, or—if you're feeling really creative!—talking objects, like erasers or pencils or tennis shoes.

A great script is made up of compelling and complex characters. The characters are important because the audience will connect with them more than any other element of your script. You might have great setting or a genius plot twist, but in the end, it's your characters that audience members are going to love, hate, feel sorry for, cheer for, and want to throw things at. Star Wars would just be a bunch of explosions and Ewoks without the tension between Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader. Simply put, great characters make for great scripts!
So, the question remains: how do you go about creating compelling characters? The easiest and most interesting way to bring great characters into being is called "visualization." Visualization is the process of creating a clear, strong picture of something in your mind. For your characters, this means getting a strong idea of how your characters think, feel, speak, move, dress, and look. You should ask yourself how they spend their free time, what their biggest hopes and fears are, their favorite kind of ice cream, and their most hated vegetable. Basically, all the things that make a person (or a talking eraser!) individual, compelling, and unique.

In order to help you along in this process of visualizing your characters, we've put together a couple of worksheets that will help you get to know your characters inside and out. You'll find two worksheets—the Protagonist Questionnaire and the Supporting Character Questionnaire—attached below. But first, a word about each:

  • The Protagonist is the main character of your script, the person or animal that has the starring role. This is the character whose adventure the reader will be following most closely throughout your script.
  • The Supporting Character are the ones who interact with the main character and move the plot forward. Sometimes a supporting character can be thought of as the sidekick—someone who helps the protagonist accomplish his or her goal, whether it is to slay a dragon or win the state taco-eating contest. Your script will probably have more than one supporting character, so print out a Supporting Character Questionnaire for each.

All right. It's time to create some characters and get to know them. Good luck!

Worksheets

Week Two: Antagonist, Stirring up Conflict, and Outlining Your Plot

Last week we asked a lot of questions about your protagonist. One asked what he or she wanted more than anything else in the world. It may have been finding buried treasure, bringing about world peace, or just getting a date to the prom. We'll leave those details up to you. The point is, most scripts map out the story of the protagonist trying to get what he or she wants.

At the end of the day, most scriptwriters do allow their main character to get the treasured item or experience he or she is after. But writers never, ever make it easy. Why would they? It is much more fun and entertaining for audiences to watch a main character struggle and overcome great odds before his or her quest is over. A story that doesn’t have conflict is, well, lifeless. Scripts need struggles, obstacles, and setbacks.

Which brings us to the antagonist.

The antagonist is there to stand in the protagonist's way, bringing conflict and drama to your story. Your antagonist, by the way, does not have to be a person. A story might have a protagonist battling against a disease, self-doubt, or a corrupt government. Scripts with a clear villain, though, tend to be easier for audiences to follow. For your Script Frenzy script, we recommend you invent an actual living, breathing antagonist to give your script more oomph. But don’t let us stop you from creating an internal or more conceptual antagonist.

Exercise

To help you come up an antagonist of your own, we've created a Antagonist Questionnaire for you to download and fill out. Remember: to create a complex and interesting conflict, you need to know just as much about your antagonist as you do about your protagonist.

Conflict and Plot

Now that you know your protagonist, supporting characters, and your antagonist inside and out, you have all the information you need to create a thrilling conflict and a solid plot. The following exercise will help you do just that!

Now that you have your main character, supporting characters, and villain, you're ready to create a thrilling conflict and a solid plot. The following exercise will help you do just that!

But first, a few words about conflict and plot:

  • Conflict in a script or story is the main character's struggle to get over his or her fears and defeat the villain to get what he or she wants. A script's conflict is what makes it exciting! As we mentioned in the section about villains, it is much more fun for audiences to watch a main character struggle and overcome great odds before his or her journey ends.
  • Plot is how the main character overcomes challenges to reach his or her goal. You may have a great conflict, but if your character never embarks on an adventure, you won't have a plot. Your plot will include all your characters and all the events that happen in your script from the beginning to end.

Exercise

Read through and fill out the following worksheets to get your characters off the page and into action:

  • Conflict Worksheet
  • Plot Handout and Worksheet.
  • Bonus Hollywood Formula Worksheet If you’ve decided to write a screenplay this April, use this worksheet to break your script down into even smaller sections than the ones you just learned about in the Plot Worksheet. You do not have to use this "formula," but it might be helpful if you're still not sure what to do with the characters you've created!

Take your time in reading and completing these worksheets. They will be a valuable resource during The Frenzy!

Week Three: Setting and Dialogue

Two weeks down and only two more to go before the official start to Script Frenzy. You're more than halfway there. Congratulations!

This week, we're going to look at two really important elements of your script: setting and dialogue. Now that you know who the characters in your script will be, it's time to figure out where they will be, and how they will talk and once they get there. By the end of Week Three, you will know how to use setting to create mood and how to write dialogue that develops your conflict, advances your plot, and defines your characters.

Setting

The setting of your script is where the action takes place. Some settings are completely made up, while other settings are based on real places. For example, all of the settings in the screenplay for To Kill A Mockingbird are based on Harper Lee's hometown in Alabama. All the settings in The Lord of the Rings were figments of Tolkien's imagination. In choosing your settings, remember that you have complete freedom!

However, there's something important to consider when writing setting for a script. In a novel, a writer can go on and on for pages describing every last detail of their setting—from the old courthouse on the town square to Boo Radley's mysterious house. A scriptwriter, however, has to be more concise than that. In a screenplay or a stage play, the focus is on the characters, the action, and the dialogue—that's what the audience is going to latch onto. Imagine watching a movie that was allsetting, shot after shot of the courthouse, the schoolyard, the town square, but without a single person or moment of action! You'd get pretty bored, pretty quickly.

So, lucky you! This means you don't have to write for pages and pages about the setting. You can give just a few descriptive details, and then the stage manager (if you're writing a play) or the locations expert (if you're writing a film or TV show) or the artist (if you're writing a script for a comic book) will figure out all the rest. You just have to decide where the action will take place over the course of your script. Before you begin, though, it might help to think about settings that will create mood.

Mood

A mood describes the emotional quality of something, whether it is a song, a painting, or in this case, a setting. It might help to think of mood as the kind of emotions you want your audience to experience while watching or reading the final product of your script. Scriptwriters use all kinds of techniques to create a certain mood so the audience feels certain things as they watch the story unfold.

For example, if a scriptwriter wants to create a gloomy mood for a particular scene, he or she might set it in a dimly lit hallway or open with a shot of a crow nesting in a dead tree. Both of these images remind us of dark, creepy things. Presto! The scriptwriter has been able to make us feel something, without us even being aware of it.

To create a mood, think of the emotions you want your audience to feel in each scene, and then make sure your background is in keeping with that feeling. The worst thing would be to hope that a certain setting or scene would make your audience feel sad or scared, only to find they are laughing their heads off on opening night!

In order to help you create settings with moods, we have put together a Setting and Mood Worksheet! This will get you thinking about your own settings and what kind of emotions you'd like your audience to be feeling as they enjoy your story.

Writing Dialogue

Whether you've decided to write a stage play, a screenplay, a comic, or a teleplay, dialogue is the most important tool you have in telling your story. Dialogue is what happens when characters speak to one another, and your script is going to be filled with these meaningful exchanges. When you write a short story or a novel, you are allowed to just tell the reader things about your characters and plot. In a script, on the other hand, the characters have to reveal their personalities and move the plot along through what they say out loud to themselves and those around them.

We experience dialogue all the time in our everyday lives. A common exchange of dialogue in real life might sound something like this:

"Hey, dude. How are you?"

"I'm really good. Thanks for asking. And you?"

"Good, thanks."

Of course, this kind of dialogue is important to everyday life. In fact, most of our daily interactions depend on these kinds of exchanges. If we didn't say "hello" and ask people how they are doing, we might lose a lot of friends, fast. But in a script, long scenes of this kind of realistic dialogue end up being mind-numbingly dull. It's tricky: audience members actually want to hear unrealistic dialogue when they go to a movie or watch TV. They want to hear interesting characters make exciting declarations, challenge each other, improvise hilarious wisecracks, or reveal the whereabouts of the portal to the fifth dimension.

Dialogue in a script should do one, if not all, of the following:

  • Move the plot forward
  • Increase the tension
  • Help to define characters
  • Illustrate the relationships between characters

Here are example exchanges to illustrate each.

Dialogue that moves the plot forward

he PHONE rings. BORIS answers.

BORIS

Hello?

DAVE

Is this Boris the Unicorn?

BORIS

Yeah. Who's this?

DAVE

Dave.

BORIS

I don't know any Dave.

DAVE

Your brother.

BORIS

    I don't have a brother. My family died a long time ago.

DAVE

Not your whole family.

Right away, the audience wants to know who Dave is, if he's telling the truth, and what Boris is going to do next. In terms of plot, this is a great inciting incident. The discovery of a long-lost sibling is certain to move your plot forward in interesting ways.

Dialogue that increases the tension

BORIS

We've got to get out of here! The building's going to blow!

DAVE

Wait!

BORIS

Why?!

DAVE

Abigail's still on the roof. I'm going back up.

An audience already knows that the scene is tense because it’s set in a building that’s about to explode, but this dialogue raises the stakes (and the tension) when Dave mentions that he's headed back into the building.

Dialogue that defines characters:

BORIS walks into a fine-dining restaurant.

BORIS

What up, G-dawg?

WAITER

Good morning to you, sir. Welcome to our fine establishment.

BORIS

I’ve been playing Guitar Hero for 40 hours straight!

WAITER

I have not a clue what you are talking about young man, but I might suggest that you keep your voice down. You are upsetting our diners.

Obviously, Boris and the waiter are two very different people, and we can tell this just by the way they talk. It's likely that Boris is much younger than the waiter, and he is clearly more hip and excitable. The waiter, on the other hand, is more formal, and doesn’t know the first thing about youth culture. In just a few seconds of dialogue, the audience finds out a lot about these characters. As you write your own script, think about how people talk can help define who they are.

Dialogue that shows the relationship between characters:

BORIS

Abigail, what's the capital of Spain?

ABIGAIL

Madrid. Jeez, were you born on Mars?

BORIS

A matter a fact, I was. Why are you so sarcastic all the time? Do you think you're better than me or something?

Okay, obviously Boris and Abigail have some issues to work out. It's clear from this exchange that they probably haven’t known each other long (Abigail doesn't know that Boris was, in fact, born on Mars), and that Abigail, for some reason, treats Boris with disrespect. More than likely, she does feel superior to him. We've learned something about how these characters' relationship, all through a few simple lines of dialogue.

Exercise

Writing good dialogue is like writing a comic strip. Comic-strip artists only have so many panels to fill before running out of room. If they spend too much time on "Hey, dude, how are you doing?" they run out of panels without anything happening. To help you understand how flat this kind of dialogue can sound in script form, we've put together this nifty Boring Dialogue Handout.

Once you've read the Boring Dialogue Handout, print out four of the blank Dialogue Worksheets. Try to write four scenes of dialogue: one that moves the plot forward, one that increases the tension, one that defines one—or all!— of your characters, and one that reveals something about the relationship between two or more characters.

After you’re finished, draw in all the details. You may discover you are a talented comic-book artist after all!

Week Four: Writing Scenes and Formatting Your Script

Great! You are almost ready for Script Frenzy. You have characters, conflict, and an outline for an amazing plot. Plus, you have the know-how to write scenes that create mood and to write plot-moving and character-defining dialogue! In this final week of Boot Camp we will take everything you’ve learned so far and begin thinking about the actual scenes that will make up your script. Finally, right before we send you head-first into The Frenzy, we will show you the ins-and-outs of script formatting.

Writing Scenes

Just like novels are made up of chapters, scripts are made up of scenes. A scene is a section of a script that is either set in a single location or that follows a particular character, or group of characters, for a set period of time. So far, you have broken your script down into a plot outline, and you may have even broken your screenplay down into “beats.” Now it is time to take it one step further and break your script into scenes.

To help you start thinking of your scripts in terms of scenes, we’ve created a Scene Worksheet for you to download and fill out. Whether you have five or fifty scenes in your script, you can use these worksheets to figure out all the “who, what, where, when, how, and now-whats” of your script.

Exercise

To break in these Scene Worksheets, we're going to write a three-scene script. The catch: Each scene can only be one-minute long. Each page of a script typically lasts one minute, so we're looking at three pages total for the whole script. Meaning this entire practice script will be shorter than a song on the radio, but writing it will teach you a ton about breaking your story up into scenes.

For this exercise, we'll supply the structure, and then let you fill in the rest:

  • Scene One: The audience learns of your protagonist's quest or desire.
  • Scene Two: The audience meets the antagonist and learns of his or her scheme to foil the protagonist’s plans.
  • Scene Three: The audience find out what happens when the protagonist and the antagonist face off. It can be a happy, tragic, or funny ending.

So go grab your Protagonist, Supporting Character, and Antagonist Worksheets, along with your Conflict and Plot Worksheets. These will help you cook up some ideas for scenes in which your characters might reveal their quests and villainous counter-schemes. This exercise will also be a way to practice choosing settings that create mood! Once you have a rough sense of each scene, fill out three Scene Worksheets, one for each scene.

Awesome.

Now if you really wanted to get a head start on your script, use the Plot Worksheet from Week Three and break down your whole script scene-by-scene. Print out as many Scene Worksheets as you need to get you from the opening of your story all the way to the end credits (or curtain fall).

Formatting Your Script

Ladies and gentlemen, the launch of Script Frenzy is just around the corner, and the moment you have all been waiting for (or dreading) is finally here. It's time to learn how to format your script. You have the content: characters, conflict, plot, and ideas for settings. Now it's time to put it together in a pretty package.

It's important to learn standardized script formatting so that the director, actors, and artists can read and understand your script before and during production. Before venturing out into the great wilderness of script formatting, take some time to read over the following How-Tos:

  • Formatting a Stage Play
  • Formatting a Screenplay
  • Formatting a Teleplay
  • Formatting a Comic Book (BBC)*Note that comic-book scripts do not have set standards like stage plays, screenplays, and teleplays. The format used here, known as the “full-script format,” is the one most commonly used, but different comic-book writers use different script formats. The same writer may even use different formatting for different kinds of comic books.

    • Exercise

    Now that you have read all about formatting, take out the three Scene Worksheets you filled out last week, and on a separate sheet of paper (or using one of the script templates or scriptwriting programs mentioned below) go ahead and write each scene out it its entirety, including the proper scene headings, action, and dialogue margins. .

    Script Handouts: Print these out and fill in the blanks.

    Scriptwriting Software: To make things really easy, you can write your script using software that will practically do all the formatting for you! Some of these programs cost money, but others are totally free. Check out our Script Software page to find out more.

    Script Templates: If you don't want to learn a whole new program and are planning to write your script using Microsoft Word or Open Office, it may be helpful to use a template. “Template” is just a technical word to describe a document that is set up with a bunch of useful formatting already built in. In this case the templates are pre-formatted to write scripts. Once you open the template, you can display a template menu by going to the “Format” menu option and selecting “Styles and Formatting.” A menu will then pop up with all the different script elements. For example, if you wanted to write dialogue, first select “Character” from the menu bar and write your character’s name. Hit enter. Then select “Dialogue,” and write what you want them to say.

    Just so you know, you can write your script any way you like in April. You can use any or all of these scriptwriting templates or the writing software. Or, if you feel more comfortable, you can write your script by hand.

    A final note

    During this Boot Camp, you have learned many important things about scriptwriting, but the only way to really learn something is to practice. That is what April is for. So get out there and practice writing those blockbuster movies, Broadway plays, award-winning TV shows, and collectible comic books! And, don’t forget that the most important thing to do this April is to have fun.